The Best PC Is Not Always The Newest PC

I recently acquired a Dell Dimension XPS D266 in the local salvage yard.

Now, I usually do not grab computers from there cause most are dumped for a reason, but this one caught my eye. So after taking it back to my shop I opened it up, and it was all original! The Maxtor 90432D3 4.2GB hard drive, Intel Pentium 2 266MHZ Slot 1, and 64MB PC66 SD-RAM really burnt my wires and the Windows 98 Original would make even the beginners laugh!

So after digging in my part boxes in the back room, I found my only Slot 1 Processor, an Intel Celeron 300MHZ. After inserting it And Powering on the PC, it now read as a D300 instead of a D266! this was even more encouraging! I then tried all of my ram and found 2 128MB PC133 RAM that worked in place of the PC66 RAM, witch gave it a total of 256MB RAM.

After inserting the ram I added a WD40BB-75CAA0 40GB IDE hard drive as a secondary drive, an NVIDIA VANTA 8MB Video Card, and a Netgear FA311 Ethernet Card. After placing all the hardware in I installed Windows 2000 Professional on the Maxtor 4.2GB And used the Western Digital 40GB to install the programs, and for saving documents and other files to. At this point I compared it to My Acer Aspire Netbook With 1GB DDR2 RAM, 150GB SATAII HD, 256MB Mobile Intel 945 Video, and Windows XP Home.

The Netbook booted 3.5 seconds after the older dell! So with saying all this, if your really strapped for cash and need a fast PC but don't require all the bells and whistles try building your own. By visiting used part stores, or picking up any old PC's from yard sales or salvage yards, you may save yourself a few hundred bucks, and still have the speed and performance you need to run daily tasks,or run your business, weather its just you or its a large national Chain!

The information on Computing.Net is the opinions of its users. Such
opinions may not be accurate and they are to be used at your own risk.
Computing.Net cannot verify the validity of the statements made on this
site. Computing.Net and Compnet Ventures, LLC hereby disclaim all responsibility
and liability for the content of Computing.Net and its accuracy.